Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Page 26

  “Sebastian—I’m interested in all of this, really. But right now I’m more interested in our friend in Sick Bay.”

  Darkwood sat in his command chair, Sebastian hulking over him as he spoke, the familiar noises of the Reagan’s bridge something Darkwood found himself oddly aware of, keenly aware of, as if a background for his thoughts. “This man Rourke, Sebastian—he is evidently from another culture like our own, but a surface culture.”

  “I would be more inclined to think of it as a culture more similar to that of the Chinese, in many respects more in touch with the reality of existence far beyond our own scope.”

  “Reality of existence?”

  “For five centuries, Mid-Wake has battled the Russians here beneath the sea, and for five centuries both we and they have had precious little time for concerns other than survival. But, most curiously, the Chinese endured several centuries of peace, it appears from my brief discussion with the escapee who accompanied Captain Aldridge and the others here. We have advanced in the ways of war, but perhaps the Chinese and what other terrestrial cultures there may be have advanced in other ways. For the dead, on the surface, the war ended. For those who survived, as did the Chinese it would appear, the war ended as well. But for ourselves …”

  Jason Darkwood looked up at his friend. “Generation after generation, your ancestors and mine.”

  “I have always found it rather ironic that our ancestors were scientists dedicated to advancing the possibilities of living and working beyond our planet and we have been forced in order to survive to live, in effect, beneath it. Men and women of peace forced to become a warrior culture …

  “We have art, learning—we do only what we have to do to survive, Sebastian.”

  “At what cost, Jason? For generations, we have not seen the sun except for rare visits to the surface within the past century by heroic persons willing to attempt to fly outmoded aircraft in a so-far-vain search for others of our kind—a vain search until just a few short hours ago. And oerhaDs we have indeed found other Americans, nntp.ntifll

  allies and friends, but we may also lose them forever if this man Rourke dies, as it appears he might.”

  “Your point,” Darkwood said, hearing in his own voice a testy quality he hadn’t consciously intended.

  “My point is pointlessness. If we someday defeat our Soviet adversaries, what will we do then?”

  “Return to the surface, I guess. It’s habitable now. We’ve been sure of that for the last century almost. But we can’t return to the surface while the Russians remain a threat. They wouldn’t dare use their nuclear missiles here in the ocean. It would be sheer madness.”

  Sebastian smiled strangely. “Then why have they developed them, Jason? In anticipation of destroying us after we have destroyed them? That is a logical absurdity. They intend surface conquest. The testimony of the Chinese with whom I spoke made it abundantly clear that his people have been plagued by our Soviet adversaries for some time, the ultimate goal perhaps conquest of the Chinese city on the surface, the technology they possess. Why go to the surface in order to struggle when you can go as a conqueror, with a city and all that one might require already waiting for you?”

  “That’s an intriguing theory. And if the Russians were to do that, we couldn’t stop them unless we fabricated nuclear weapons of our own, if we had the opportunity.”

  “Yes.” Sebastian nodded somberly. “Built nuclear weapons. We threaten and they threaten and eventually they strike first or we strike first and the world is once again in ashes. What will we have achieved then?”

  Jason Darkwood had no answer to that.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The darkness was like velvet now, and the stars were very bright as they always were in the thinner atmosphere since the Great Conflagration. And the temperature had dropped drastically. As she shifted her weight in the saddle, the blanket she had cocooned around her upper body and draped over her legs began to slip and she rearranged it.

  There was a shape, gray against the blackness, and she recognized it as one of the German field tents. Ma-Lin rode sidesaddle beside her and, for the first time in at least a mile, spoke. “I believe we approach the encampment.”

  Annie Rourke Rubenstein looked at the girl and nodded. “I believe you’re correct. I know women did it for hundreds of years, but how can you ride like that? I’d be scared to death I’d slip off.”

  “I will show you, if you like.”

  Annie smiled at the thought, picturing herself in a long dress and fancy hat and veil, riding off to the hunt like something out of a videotape movie or a book. “All right. I’d like to try it, but I don’t think I could ever get used to it.

  “Is it not uncomfortable riding astride, as you do?”

  “No—you get used to it. I haven’t ridden in a long time—a very long time. But—it just seems natural.”

  Ma-Lin smiled. Ma-Lin smiled quite a bit.

  Annie turned her little horse—the Chinese horses seemed smaller in stature than Western horses—up along

  a defile, the gray shape taking more definite substance now.

  There was a flash of light where the tent flap should be, and for a brief instant she saw a figure profiled in it. She kept riding, slowing her horse as the ground rose, then reining in a few yards away from the tent, Ma-Lin and the Chinese soldiers a respectable distance behind her. At her left was Bjorn Rolvaag, his dog Hrothgar over his saddle. Rolvaag looked so ill at ease on horseback that perhaps, Annie thought, Ma-Lin should teach the huge Icelandic policeman how to ride sidesaddle. The thought was amusing. Rolvaag half fell from the saddle, his dog bounding away from him. Annie stayed where she was.

  The figure from the tent approached, a lantern in one hand, a pistol in the other. She could see his face clearly now as he belted the pistol and raised the lantern toward her.

  Annie had been told by the Chairman that his personal representative with the Rourke-Rubenstein party sent to penetrate the Soviet base camp was an intelligence agent named Han Lu Chen.

  He was a smallish man, wiry-looking and with an air of toughness, but with a warmth in his eyes that she liked. “So—you are Mrs. Rubenstein. It is an honor to meet a woman whose father, husband, and brother are all men of such great courage.”

  She had flown by J-7V, traveled by one of the German jeep-like vehicles—its technical designation something which continually eluded her powers of recall—then ridden the last five miles on horseback. And she was tired of politeness.

  “Yes—and you are Han Lu Chen.”

  “Yes.” Rolvaag’s dog was sniffing at Han’s high boots and the Chinese bent over to stroke the animal behind the ears, saying something in his own language which she could not comprehend. Then he reached up and took hold of the reins of her horse. “Your brother and your husband and Dr. Leuden have not been heard from in several hours. There is no reason to suppose that something is

  amiss, yet there is no reason for rejoicing. Please join me in the tent for refreshment.”

  “I didn’t come here to be refreshed. I came to look for my husband, my brother, and then for my father and Major Tiemerovna. But there’s no sign of them either, is there?”

  “There is no sign. It is cold out here. Please—may I help you to dismount, Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  She only nodded, not that she needed help, sluffing off the blanket and draping it across the front of the saddle, then rising in the stirrups and swinging her right leg up and over, stepping down, Han’s hand at her elbow. She was shivering without the blanket, the heavy shawl and the coat beneath it usually more than adequate, but not now after sitting for the past five miles with the cutting edge of the wind so terribly cold.

  Han led the way inside, and as he moved his lantern she realized there were two other tents.

  The interior of Han’s tent was just as she had expected, warm, comfortable, and yet militarily austere. All at once she was warm and she took the shawl from her head and shoulders and folded it neatly, stil
l standing just inside the hermetic seal. “I see that the rider who went on ahead of us has briefed you,” Annie said quietly.

  “That you wish to rescue your husband and brother and Doctor Leuden, assuming they require it.”

  She opened her coat and swung back the coattails on both sides. The gesture worked for men. At her right hip was the Detonics Scoremaster .45, at her left hip the Beretta 92F. “I assume they require it.”

  The Chinese looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “May I offer you refreshment, Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  “I will feel more refreshed when I am given information.

  “Very well, madame.” She liked the sound of that word. “The Russians are very strong here. Some while ago, helicopters were brought in, very large machines; and my men were able to detect that people were being carried in aboard them. The people were young and old, male and

  female. There were children. All of them were naked. A force of Soviet soldiers herded them across the snow. I presume to some sort of short-term internment and perhaps eventual death. Much is going on in the Soviet base, but from the distance which prudence dictates, it is impossible to tell in great detail. It is clear that something must be done and very quickly, Mrs. Rubenstein. But what? Without the data that would have been the natural result of the foray made by your husband, your brother, and Doctor Leuden, I am like a blind man standing in the middle of a great hall with bottomless pits on all sides, into which I will easily fall if I take one false step.”

  “You have a nice way with words, Mr. Han.” Annie stood her ground by the doorway. “But we have to do something. One thing I learned from my father was that it is better to move forward with prudence than to stand still.”

  “Your father—he should have been Chinese.”

  “It is my sincere hope you will be able to discuss that interesting observation with him at some future date. Get me as close to the Russian camp as we dare and then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  “Very well, Mrs. Rubenstein,” and Han bowed slightly to her.

  “But before we go, may I use your bathroom?”

  He smiled and gestured toward the portion of the tent where she knew the chemical toilet would be. As she started toward it, she considered that men did not know how lucky they were to be able to urinate standing up in the middle of nowhere without getting their legs wet.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The entire thing was a disaster, Michael Rourke was beginning to realize. He had come in search of his father. So far, he had lost his best friend, Paul Rubenstein, and if he were not extremely careful, he would lose Maria Leuden. And the realization grew by the day that he loved her very much.

  His father had taught him to persevere, but that sometimes that meant withdrawing and taking a different approach. It was time for a different approach now.

  He had started walking back toward the truck, Maria in her Russian uniform beside him. “We’re leaving here,” he said almost under his breath.

  “What? But your father and Natalia—and what about Paul and Otto?”

  He stopped walking for a moment and looked at her, his eyes passing over her then and shifting about the camp. “Paul and Otto know that we might already have gone. They’ll get out. And anyway, I’ll be coming back. This isn’t the way. I know where Karamatsov is, and if he knows where my father is, Fll convince him to tell me. And if he doesn’t, all of this is useless anyway. Walk with me to the truck and don’t stop for anybody. And if something goes wrong, you get on that truck and drive like hell. I can take care of myself.”

  “Perhaps I know that you can,” she answered, then began to walk.

  Progressively, over the past several hours in the camp, hours spent moving about, searching for some clue that

  his father and Natalia had either arrived or soon would, Michael Rourke had been becoming more uneasy.

  Aside from the obvious factor that this was a Soviet camp and to be caught here would mean quite literally a fate worse than death for both of them, there was something else, almost intangible, in the air. Nervous looks in the eyes of the officers and some of the senior noncoms, idle chatter among the men that he could not understand but which sounded—somehow on edge.

  The truck was in sight now and Michael quickened his pace slightly, the number of trucks parked here increased from when he had last been in the area. “You drive—only stor> if I tell you to,” Michael hissed.

  “Yes, Michael,” Maria whispered.

  She started for the driver’s side of the cab and Michael started for the rear of the truck, to make certain that nothing had happened there and to get to the passenger seat. He was halfway back along its length when he saw the major he had seen earlier, the man whose orders had precipitated Paul and Otto’s leaving.

  Michael saluted. The major didn’t return it. The major began talking. Michael tried to look interested. The Major’s eyes …

  Miehael licked his lips.

  The major took a step back, his hand going to his belt for the pistol there. There was no choice.

  Michael’s left hand snapped forward, the gloved middle knuckles formed into a ridge of bone, impacting the base of the major’s nose, breaking it, driving the bone up into the brain. It was a technique his father had taught him for silent, virtually instantaneous killing. The bone in the nose would break the ethmoid bone and … The major’s body started to collapse, blood smearing out beneath his nostrils and across his upper lip, Michale’s hands reaching out, catching the Soviet major under the armpits, and propping him against the side of the truck.

  In the next instant, Maria Leuden was beside Michael, her voice a frightened whisper. “I saw in the mirror—

  Michael!”

  “Get back in the truck,” Michael ordered, looking around them now to see if the deed had been witnessed. There was so much activity that for the moment at least, the killing seemed to have gone unnoticed.

  Michael’s left arm went around the major’s waist, his right hand at the major’s right elbow, and he propelled the dead man toward the rear of the truck, moving his lips as though in conversation, but merely reciting the Gettysburg Address under his breath. By the time Michael had him to the rear of the truck he was into Hamlet’s soliloquy.

  Nothing unexpected in the truck bed. Michael looked around himself. No one watching that he could detect. He shoved the major against the truck, then bent low, letting the major collapse over his left shoulder, then packed the body into the rear of the truck. “Sleep tight, Mother.” Michael grinned, then closed the tarp. The truck’s engine started and the belch of the exhaust shocked him for an instant.

  He resumed his circuit around the truck, ready to reach under his uniform for the twin Beretta pistols. But there was no provocation for it.

  He climbed up into the cab beside Maria, the engine purring nicely now.

  “Drive carefully, slowly, so you don’t attract attention. But don’t stop for anybody unless I say so.”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  She started the truck moving… .

  The track along which they had entered the base camp area was glutted with traffic now and Michael told Maria Leuden to take the turnoff toward the helicopter pads. In the distance on their right there was brilliant light. “What is that, Michael?”

  “I don’t know—be ready to slow down or stop. Keep going for now.” He debated whether to unlimber his pistols for faster use or keep them concealed. He decided on the latter for the moment, his eyes still drawn toward

  the light.

  And a childhood memory returned to him. His father and mother had taken him and his sister to a traveling carnival or circus—he couldn’t remember which. And they had ridden all the rides and his father had won prizes for both of them at the sharpshooting concession on the midway and then it had been time to go because of something or another—maybe school the next day. He couldn’t remember that. But he and Annie had sat in the back of the station wagon, Annie hugging the stuffed dog their father had
won for her, he and Annie both looking back toward the carnival, his stomach hurting a little from the mixture of cotton candy and soda pop. But Michael hadn’t wanted to disclose the stomach ache to his father or mother because they had both warned him that he had been eating and drinking too much.

  And he remembered how all the lights there in the middle of a dark nowhere at the edge of some Georgia cow pasture had made it look as though a spaceship had landed or something. And these lights now. Not a spaceship, certainly, nor a carnival or traveling circus either.

  “Slow down a little, Maria,” he told her.

  The lights shone down from guard towers and bathed the fences in glare, the fences made of barbed wire or perhaps some modern-day Soviet equivalent. There were tents inside the rectangle of wire and yellow-white light. But beyond the tents, inside a smaller fenced area, he could see massive structures of concrete and beside these, parked, trucks, the cabs linked to the massive cylinders of gas …

  “Holy God,” Michael Rourke whispered, realizing what • it was that he saw.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Boris Feyedorovitch stood at attention before the three bored faces of the triumvirate.

  The face in the middle changed expression and words came from between the flaccid lips. “The Sverdlovsk has been retrofitted with the new surface-searching scanning array, I have been given to understand.”

  “Yes, Comrade Chairman. I believe this is true.”

  “The woman who claims she was an officer of the Committee for State Security and is the wife of this Marshal Karamatsov—she lives?”